2024

Porras, Päivi; Hurme, Jarkko; Lähteenmäki, Henry

This paper presents an open online course aimed at those Not in Education, Employment, or Training (NEET). The course aims to give school dropouts, unemployed,and immigrants the opportunity to returnor to enrolonstudies.There areplenty of labour market training available for unemployed, but this does not necessarily contribute to further studies and thus improveone's own social position. Most entrance examinations often emphasise mathematical competence, which, especially for school dropouts and for the unemployed, may have remained at a low level or been forgotten over the years. This online courseunder developmentaims to address this shortcoming.As the target group is those currently outside the labour force, special attention must be paid to promoting learning/studying skillsin the design of the online course. Students' self-direction skills are tested and based on theirresults, they are given tips on how to improve different aspects, as taking responsibility for one's own study is essential inan online course. In addition, the technical implementation of the course must be clear,and the instructions given on the tasks sufficient. The target group may not be asexperienced as typical online course students, in which case even minor adversities may lead to dropping out. Tomaintain interest, the tasks are designed to be interactive,and they also provide feedback when doing the task, not only after the return.